Hymn to the Night
by Mystic25
Summary: The darkness in the doorway whispers...Rated T for imagery, language, and violence.


"Hymn to the Night."

Mystic25

Summary: The darkness in the doorway whispers…

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Check and mate.

Rating: T For language, violence, and imagery.

A/N: This is set in S10. Dean does have the Mark, but it's not a key plotline here.

 **xxxXxx**

" _We're brothers; we're family."_

~Dean Winchester "Supernatural"

 **-o-o-**

" _Oh holy Night! From thee I learn to bear_

 _What man has borne before!_

 _Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care_

 _And they complain no more."_

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

" **Hymn to the Night."**

 **xxxXxx**

* * *

Sam doesn't remember if he is alone or not. He doesn't remember much of anything except darkness, and heat so hot he thinks for one terrifying minute that he's been cast back down into the Cage, or maybe that he never left at all.

He is burning so hot he swears – _literally_ swears, his voice sounds booming and garbled to him. He flails and tries to escape the oppressive heat, but his arms feel like they are tied down. He stops swearing only to start screaming and thrashing. He feels blood spill out of his arms and sodden thick lengths of something tying them down. He pulls and jerks at his arms, and keeps on screaming, trying to get away.

A distant boom comes from somewhere in the darkness and the heat. Something calls his name, and then comes a touch so electrifying that he rears up in agony.

Fingertips grip his arm, and a cold sensation of metal licks the edge of his skin.

Sam tries to jerk again. _"No!-"_

The finger grips become tighter. He hears his name again, a loud booming thing. "No please," he jerks even harder, trying to break his wrists, if it means he would get away. "Please don't do this-" he stops screaming, and begins pleading, because he doesn't remember anything, and his thoughts of being trapped back in the Cage aren't just thoughts anymore. He's there, and everything burns and hurts, and the torture is relentless. " _Please don't do this-"_

"I have too," the booming voice says something else besides his name, and the metal is on the other side of his wrist, sliding up his skin like the cold, blue ice that Lucifer's Cage surrounds itself in.

" _Please-"_ his voice shakes hard and tears scald their way down his skin.

"Almost through Sammy-"

The blue, ice cold burn of the Cage shakes and trembles away at the sound of his name spoken in this way. Everything around him turns gray. He is tied down to an old, metal bedframe with no mattress. The fingers on his skin are Dean's, and the metal that seconds ago was agony, is the blade of Dean's knife slicing through layers of blood sodden rope that lashes his wrist and ankles to the bedframe.

The last bit of rope snaps free, making limbs go limp with needle like pain and they burn from thick rope burns he feels encircling his flesh. He turns his head and sees rows of beds next to the one he's tied too. Two women, and a man are tied onto the ones closest to him, their bodies sunken, eyes ashy and locked away in some kind of torment, as his own eyes go wide in stunned shock.

 **xxXxx**

"Dean, Wha's happenin?" Sam's voice is heavy as week old maple syrup left out to harden into sugar. "Where are we-?"

Sam's barely wearing anything, only a thin, dirty blue hospital gown, his skin is freezing. Bloody gashes the size of fingernails cover the whole length of both arms.

"Someplace no one's gonna have to go again, especially you, c'mon," Dean swings Sam's legs off of the bed and pulls him up with an arm over his shoulders.

Sam's legs crumble under him like paper mâché trying to take on the weight of bricks. He feels his bare feet scrape hard against an old wooden floor, trying to find some sort of purchase that does not exist. He makes a rattling ' _ah!'_ noise as pain punches breaths from his body.

"Take it easy," Dean pulls up until Sam stops falling; he pulls one of Sam's bleeding arms up over his shoulder.

Sam's head swings like a lever, eyes moving back and forth across the dark room. "What happened?" he swallows down the rancid, soupy vomit that emerges up from his stomach and into his throat from the movement. "Dean?-"

Dean pulls Sam's body up higher against his own, supporting the weight that Sam cannot. "Not until you're outta here Sammy-"

Sam moves with Dean's next movement, one bare foot peeling apart from the floor, leaving a bloody footprint that almost glows from the grayness of the floorboards and the darkness.

The man and the woman on the beds two down from one Sam had been freed from are dead, Sam sees the glazed film coating their eyes, the lack of breath that escapes their bodies, drying foul smelling blood in patterns the size of fingerprints covering their bare arms. The buzzing sound of flies hang in the air above them and the sound carries to him as several of the insects move to hover over his spilled blood. His sense of touch finally normalizes itself enough to feel the tight, stretched places marking the blood on his own arms left open to the bare air.

The vomit climbs up hot and thick in Sam's throat again as his mind races in thoughts of his death with theirs. A Hunter trapped with innocent people, able to do nothing but die with them.

"Dean-" his voice sounds like glass scrapping apart limestone.

"Don't look Sam," Dean's voice is a cocktail of emotion: one part hardened Hunter and two parts big brother trying to keep his sibling from seeing himself lying there, dying, unable to help. He turns Sam away from the dead bodies, down rows and rows of empty beds, all with blood stained sheets and dark stains near them on the floorboards.

"Wait-" Sam sees the slightest flutter of movement from the white gown of the woman tied down to the bed next to his. "Dean she's breathing!" he grabs forward at the air until his hand closes around the metal bedframe. "Hey-" he falls to his knees, jarring pain all the way up to his eyes.

The woman's eyes are glazed and unfocused like the other two, but when Sam touches her arm, her eyes begin to clear, her head turning to the sound of his voice.

"It's okay," Sam sets a hand on the top of her head. She blinks, and tears race down her eyes, making paths in the drying blood that stains her face. A warbling, mewing sound comes from her cracked lips.

"It's going to be okay- Dean-" Sam turns away from the woman, keeping his hand on her forehead. He feels Dean move from behind him and cut apart the ropes around the woman's wrists and ankles with ' _thunking'_ sounds, spilling them to the ground like dead snakes. "We're going to get you out of here okay?" the last of the ropes fall away and the woman's face scrunches in agony from the pain it produces.

"Sammy I can't carry her and you-" Dean argues in a voice he keeps low enough to prevent it from traveling any further then where they are. He hides the switchblade away in his pocket.

"Take her," Sam says to Dean. "I'll follow you out-"

"Sam you can't walk!-" Dean says back to his brother. "I'm not leaving you alone!-"

"Dean-"

Sam's voice is cut off as Dean's hand reaches and closes around his mouth, turning around to the walkway created between the rows of empty stained beds behind him. Sam falls silent, his quick breaths blowing against Dean's fingers and Dean lowers his hand.

The rows of beds stop at the wooden post and lintel of a doorway as big as a barn door opening into absolute blackness, and it is in this that Dean hears it – the quickening sounds of footfalls.

Dean pulls something large out of jacket pocket, a crooked piece of Cypress wood that is carved to a sharpened point at one end. His hands are damp with Sam's blood and he closes the point of the stake in his palm until bits of this blood clings itself to the stake, reaching over Sam to brush his fingers against the woman's still damp face.

Dean's touch on the woman's face causes her to jerk away like a rabbit caught in a trap. A scream issues from her mouth, dying a moment later as Sam closes his hand over her mouth.

The sounds of the footfalls grow closer.

Dean swipes the woman's wet blood on his hand onto the stake until it stains the Cypress wood along with Sam's. "Stay down- "He sets a hand onto his brother's back, and keeps it there as he turns to face the darkness, blocking Sam's and the woman's bodies with his own as he begins to walk down the old wooden floorboards with slow steps to keep his shoes from making as little noise as possible.

The woman's breath is hot and rapid under Sam's fingers, her eyes now terrified. He reaches down with his free hands to the fallen, cut rope pieces, winding them around her wrist. She jerks in fear.

"Shh-" Sam's whispers quietly, quickly working the rope around the abused flesh of both of her wrists. "It's okay-"

 **[** _"Twelve people all went missing in this same little town, all at night, all from their beds, with no signs of forced entry."_

" _So, what?" Dean looks over at Sam as he drives down the small rural Georgia Highway "We thinking Demon attack?"_

" _Could be," Sam flips through the manila file, at the glossy pictures of all the missing victims, six women and seven men. "Except demons wouldn't just vanish twelve people from a town, they'd possess them and keep them there."_

 _Dean turns to Sam "So what do you think it is?"_ _ **]**_

Sam pulls himself across the bedframe with one hand, body shaking from even that little effort. He grabs the last pieces of rope and wraps them above the thick, bloody rope burns on her ankles, tying it as loosely as he can. "Keep still." He hears just the scantest noise of Dean's footsteps that are drown out by the ones coming from the blackness of the opened doorway.

 **[** _"_ Nyx? _You're saying you think a_ band _abducted all these people?"_

" _Dude, not_ Styx, _" Sam's voice is slightly exasperated at the motel's 'dinette set' where he sits with his laptop, white dress shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows._ "Nyx," _He turns his laptop around, to a shadowy figure of a woman that is half cloaked in black vapor emerging from a deep blackness. "She's the Greek Goddess of Night."_ **]**

The footsteps morph into light, prickling sounds like something walking with needles on their shoes. The darkness in the doorway whispers and moves outward into the opened room.

 **[** _"According to this, she was one of the Primordial Gods."_

" _Primordial? - like_ first?"

"Exactly _like first," Sam scrolls down the website to a second image depicting a painting of a woman with everything – hair clothes, skin- the color of the darkest part of shadows. The image does not show her face; she is pinning down Zeus on Mt. Olympus, as he struggles to in her grip. "She was created long before Zeus and the other Olympians, even before the_ Titans _for that matter. She is straight from Tartarus, the mother of Chaos and Death. Supposedly she was even feared by Zeus himself."_

 _Dean looks at the painted rendering of the darkness forming around the figure in black robes, and even with all that he has killed and seen in his lifetime, something tingling dances down his spine._ _ **]**_

The Darkness begins to move more purposefully than any smoke, tendrils of blackness creeping up the metal of the bedframes like long fingers with slow hissing noises.

 **[** _"So what is it doing here?" Dean asks his brother over their pile of burger wrappers and empty paper soda cups. "If she's so powerful and Primordial, why is she slumming it in backwoods Georgia?_

" _I don't know," Sam answers honestly._

 _Dean recognizes the look that comes to Sam's eyes. "But you have a theory, don't you? You're wearing your: 'I have a theory ask me about it Dean!' face."_

" _I don't have a-"_

" _Sammy."_

 _Sam's look of petulance ends at the sound of his name "Starvation."_ **]**

The blackness moves past the empty bed frames, sweeping under and over the stained mattresses until it is in front of the row of occupied beds. It hovers in the air over the dead bodies like it is sniffing them, then moves away like something discarding empty food wrappers.

 **[** _"_ What?"

" _Think about it- Nyx feeds off the chaos and death of her believers, except there aren't enough people in Greece who still believe in the old ways. So maybe she was forced to improvise."_

" _Because there are so many people in southern_ America _who believe in Old Time Greek religion?"_

" _Dean we're in_ Athens _Georgia. Greek influences are all over the South. Back during the Civil War era people down here used to build their homes as mini Greek temples with statues of the Gods in their courtyards."_

" _Except this isn't the Gone with the Wind anymore Sammy," Dean says. "People don't exactly do Cotillions like they used to down here. And even when they did, hoop skirts aren't white robes and blood sacrifices, that ain't Greek to me, how can be Greek to a freakin'_ God?"

" _Dude,_ Prometheus _appeared in the road_ two _years ago, maybe Nyx is hungry enough to call this close enough."_ **]**

The Darkness travels up and over the next mattress, finding it empty, the tendril swirls down to the brown boots, torn jeans and plaid shirt pilled at the foot of the bed. A rasp, angry sound comes from deep inside of it.

 **[** _"Anything?"_

" _Nothing, except that I now know there's actually a damn_ video _game about the Goddess of Night." Dean holds up a Wii Game cartridge called: "Nyx: Kindred Spirit." Below the title is an image of a blonde sprouting full on angel wings with a waistline as thin as two finger breaths, wearing a white robe that barely counts as clothing. "I gotta say though, I like Wii's version better than that freakish nightmare you showed me earlier," He walks to where the Impala is parked under a halogen street light "How about you?"_

" _I interviewed Madeline's sister," Sam says through the phone, speaking of one of the victims who went missing three days ago. He stares out at the dark parking lot through the slats in the blinds of their motel room. There are three cars, and five oil stains that are parked outside. "She says Madeline was staying with her for some R &R to get away from five boys plus her husband-"_

" _Sounds kinky if you ask me."_

" _Dude_ everything _sounds kinky if I ask you-"_

" _It's called having game my brother."_

" _Imagine if it were_ you _and_ me."

 _The silence that follows is so satisfying to Sam._

" _Sam don't ever give me thoughts like that again-"_

" _Doesn't sound as kinky as you thought, does it?"_

" _Shut your mouth and tell me what else."_

 _Sam smiles at the point he just won. "Madeline was sleeping in the guest room. Her sister says she woke up to her screaming, when she ran to check on her,Madeline was just gone, windows and doors locked, no signs of struggle."_

" _No sulfur?"_

" _Not even a trace."_

" _So we're really dealing with a Primordial Goddess of Darkness then. Great." Dean digs his car keys from out of his jacket pocket. "You figure out how to nix Nyx yet?"_

" _Yeah, there isn't much about Nyx online aside from pop culture. But I did manage to fine a professor of anthropology who agreed to Face Time with me,and according to_ her _there are legends that speak of Nyx being slain a stake of Cypress wood soaked in the still damp blood of two or more of her victims before they perish."_

" _Oh great, since we have jack for leads on this Freak, finding two or more of her victims before she nightmares them to death should be a piece of cake."_

" _I did manage to find some Cypress wood at a local furniture maker's outlet to use for a stake so that makes us one third of the way there." Sam turns away from the window._

" _Awesome." Dean opens the driver's side door of the Impala. "But next time you wanna whittle your wood after meeting a sexy anthropologist, Sammy, keep it to yourself._ _"_

" _Dude-"_

 _Something rattles against the motel room window._

 _Sam turns around._

" _Sam-?"_

 _Sam walks over to the window and parts the slats in the blinds with his hands. The night stands empty and the outside that the window frames is bare of any tree branches or plants that can scrape against the window itself, and the plants that Sam can see don't move from any wind._

 _He pulls the blinds up, looking left down parking lot, then looking right._

 _Something taps at the window again._

 _Sam turns his head back to face the parking lot head on. The streetlamps have all gone out and above the tree line and the light of the stars and the moon have all vanished without a cloud in the sky._

" _Sammy?"_

 _The darkness presses itself against the window and black smoke like tendrils begin to creep under the closed window._

 _Sam backs up and drops the phone on the bed. He reaches for the knife that sits next to a branch of crooked Cypress wood carved into a stake. He slashes the blade across his palm and wraps his hand around the Cypress._

 _A hiss comes from by the motel room door, growing into a sound that resembles whispered laughter as blackness seeps up from under the door._

" _Hey, what is it?" Dean shouts out through the phone. "Talk to me!"_

 _Sam draws his gun from the pocket of his jeans and aims it as the darkness rises higher, and higher. He fires one shot, then another and grabs for the phone at the end of the bed._

" _Dean-"_

 _A finger of darkness coils itself around his neck squeezing the wind out of him in a gasp. His gun and the Cypress branch fall to the ground and roll under the bed._

" _SAMMY!"_

 _Dean's voice is screaming in his ear, but his fingers can no longer grasp the phone and it falls and cracks on the motel room floor. He flails and chokes for air as the darkness swirls around and over him like a giant black bear, and vanishes, taking Sam with it._ **]**

The Darkness moves away from the empty bed and fans out flat over the next bed, crawling up the bare legs and arm of the woman. The black tendrils shimmer into a Grecian robe that is no lighter than the darkness it came from. Spindled, bare arms reach down from the dark smokiness, gripping the edges of the bedframe. Long hair the color of the darkest shadows brushes the skin of the woman's neck and one, long arm raise up to touch the woman's neck.

The figure hovers over the bed like a rolling storm cloud enveloping a hot summer afternoon sky. A rattled breath draws in as sinewy fingers sharpened into needle like points move down the woman's neck. _"I see you."_

 **[** _When Dean pulls into the hotel parking lot it is lit up with police sirens and is full with people. A line of police tape is wrapped around him and Sam's hotel room. He throws the car into park across three vacant spaces and runs out of the Impala._

" _Whoa whoa Sir-!" A uniformed police officer steps away from the crowd and the police tape and blocks Dean's path. "I'm gonna have to ask you to step back!-"_

" _Like hell, that's my room!" Dean moves to sidestep the officer, looking into the opened doorway of the hotel room. "Sam!-"_

 _A hand lands hard on his arm. "There were shots reported fired from this location," the deputy says. "This area is now a crime scene Sir, you_ need _to step back!" the deputy's hands grip his shoulders and push him back._

 _Dean pushes back, there is a quick burst of fighting from the deputy, but Dean lands a hard grip that jerks the deputy's arm almost completely backwards._

" _I need back up!" the deputy screams and a scattering of deputies inside the motel room run out, weapons drawn on Dean._

" _Get down!"_

" _I'm-" Dean's words are cut off by a gun shoved in his face._

" _Get on the ground!"_

" _Down on the ground!"_

 _Dean keeps one arm on the deputy and reaches inside his coat pocket._

" _Drop your weapon!"_

" _Get on your knees!"_

" _Everyone_ shut up!" _Dean's now holding his fake FBI badge, waving it around in increments in the officer's faces. He releases the Deputy in his grip with a shove. "I'f you don't have one of these," he waves the badge in the deputies' faces._ _"then you have ten seconds to clear out before you're arrested for obstruction, that includes clearing out the civilians-" he turns when no one moves. "_ NOW!"

 _The deputy who Dean had been manhandling stares at him wildly, but Dean does not wait to see if he or any other deputy listens to him. He pushes past everyone. "Sam!" He stomps over the grass and concrete until he is at their room. The green painted door is wide open and there are three bullet holes blasted into the wood. Dean ducks under the tape and steps inside the hotel room._

 _His bed is still unmade while Sam's is neat. A take-out box from the local diner sits on the dinette table next to an uneaten wrap on a paper plate, their weapons duffle sits on the bed half unzipped, every one of these items cataloged with yellow, numerical marker._

 _Dean flicks the yellow marker next to the weapon's duffle to the ground unzips it, looking inside as if expecting Sam to appear from among the brass knuckles, guns and bowie knives._

 _His foot bumps against something. He looks down and spies something metal peeking out from underneath the bed. He crouches and reaches, under in the open space, pulling out Sam's gun, phone with a jagged crack smashed in the screen, and a carved wooden stake stained red with blood._

 _He stuffs these deep into his coat, holding on to the point of the stake so it doesn't rip through the canvas, grabbing up the weapons duffle and leaves the room._

" _Who was here when you got here?!" Dean's voice explodes ahead of his steps on the concrete walkway that lead up to the motel rooms._

 _Two deputies stand in the parking lot by an open Sherriff's cruiser, the one who had tried to take down Dean is bending his right arm at an angle, gripping tightly to it. He turns in a startle at the sound of Dean's voice backing a step away towards the open car door._

" _No one," The deputy next to the one who's arm Dean nearly broke off says._

" _What about this guy?" Dean brings up a photo on his phone of Sam and Charlie posing with a first edition J.D. Salinger at an Antique Book Bazaar they both dragged him too last year. He holds the phone out in front of the deputy's face. "You didn't see him anywhere?"_

" _No one means_ no one _Agent," the deputy spits the last word out like it is something rancid. "Couple two rooms down heard gun shots, manager called us in, but the place was clean when we got here, lookin' just how you found it, windows and doors locked tight. No sign of_ him," _he gestured to the image of Sam on the phone. "No blood, no signs of struggle-"_

 _The deputy did not hear the way Dean's heart races faster._

" _Just what kind of agents are you?" the deputy that Dean hurt looks at Dean with a hard stare. "This isn't Deliverance, and we sure as hell know no FBI agent carries sawed-offs and fucking grenades inside a duffle bag as standard operating procedure." He looks down at the army green duffle bag Dean holds in his hand, takes a step towards Dean, then another. "So you gonna tell me what's really going on?"_

" _No." Dean meets the deputy's look._

 _The deputy's eyes harden. "How about if I throw your ass in jail?"_

" _Then all those missing people will never be found," Dean meets the deputy's next glowering stare._

" _Is that a_ threat?"

" _I don't have time for threats, or wasting any more time on you if this is as useful as you get," Dean's voice is a low, dangerous growl. "I have missing people to find_ including _my brother before something you can't even wrap your head around rips them apart, you want all that blood on your hands, toss me into a cell. Otherwise you give up what I tell you to give up, understand?_ **]**

The breath rattles like wind over a field of dead grass _"Such a life giving thing,"_ the fingers stroke the woman's skin _"what sustains me-"_ the sharp fingers move up and down the flesh of the woman's cheek.

The woman's body begins to shake, a sob building momentum behind her closed mouth.

The fingers pull in deeper, breaking open lines of dripping blood.

The woman's eyes fly open from the pain, and she stares into a face the color of burnt ash, the whites of eyes encasing pupil-less voids, lips made red by her own blood. The Darkness above moves, the blood red lips open and draw in, sucking air.

A dark stream curls itself upwards from the woman's mouth and into the Darkness above; the woman's sob transforms into a scream.

The blackness moves upwards like smoke that is being sucked up in a vacuum and the woman's screams grow muffled.

The black stream cuts off with an abrupt jerk. The head turns just as Dean raises the Cypress stake up high.

The Darkness enveloping the figure moves in an arch that throws Dean high into the air and into the empty bed frames, sliding them into each other like dominos.

The woman's scream becomes full born as Sam emerges up from behind one of the bedframes, taking up the stake from where it has rolled away from Dean's hand.

The Darkness arches up higher again, throwing Sam back ten feet into a solid wall of concrete, sending a splitting crack ten feet upwards.

" _Sam!"_

 **[** _"Is there any place near here remote or abandoned?" Dean asks both men, feeling the weight of the Cypress stake in his jacket._

" _We're the sixth largest city in Georgia," the first deputy says in sarcasm. "You have your pick of places that match that description."_

 _Dean's gaze turns heated. "You have profiles on where all the vics were abducted; add this motel to the list, and what does the pick of places narrow down too?"_

" _Industrial Warehouse out on Newton Road," the other deputy answers Dean with a look of surprise on his face like he can't believe he just said what he did. "It just went on the action block last month."_

" _Is it still empty?" Dean asks._

" _As far as we know."_

" _How far away?"_

" _Thirty miles; 45 minutes at this time of night."_

 _As soon as Dean hears the deputy's answer he pushes past him towards his car._

" _Hey!" The deputy runs up to catch up to Dean who is at the Impala. The deputy braces his hand on the car door before Dean can close it. Dean's face becomes hard set._

" _There's no way I'm letting a_ civilian _track down a potential serial murderer!-"_

" _My thoughts exactly," Dean shoves the deputy's hand off of the car and gets in. The engine roars on and he pulls out to the sight of the Deputy swearing at him and racing towards his cruiser._ **]**

The pain shakes its way up through Sam's body and he jerks upwards onto his right arm. He sees Dean back on his feet before a tendril of Darkness rises up, lacing around Dean's neck like a noose, rising him high into the air in suspension long enough for Dean's face to go ashy.

Sam screams his brother's name as the darkness drops Dean to the floorboards, then flings him back into a concrete support beam, wrapping around his body like rope binding.

Sam watches Dean groan and spit out blood as the Darkness billows downwards and takes the full shape of a woman in black Grecian style robes, hair as dark as an eclipse. The hem of her robe is encased in black smoke that curls at her feet like lapping dogs.

" _I am the Goddess of Night,"_ Nyx moves forward without a sound, the black smoke unfurls before her like a walkway. What little colors there are in the room leach away to blackness with each step she takes.

Sam throws an arm above his head as the Goddess approaches him. The rope burn around his wrists have been torn open clean and wide; infection has not set in, they are still fresh wounds. But they are ragged, like he had been thrashing them apart.

" _For centuries, I was granted free roam over the mortal world, feeding where and when I wanted. I was feared by all, even_ Zeus _himself."_ Nyx tilts her head down towards Sam watching him like an insect trapped under a glass. " _Then it all fell apart when Prometheus_ stole _fire for you filthy cretins and cast me out. From there it was a slippery slope from the old ways to the modern ones. You all went and switched from worshiping the ways of natural order for a face in a tortilla. So now I'm forced to scavenge, I was a_ god!" Nyx beat a long arm against her robes and darkness spreads out from them like storm clouds moving up the bedframes cracking them like frozen branches. " _Now I live like a carrion eater, feeding of_ scraps _of darkness from as many human souls as I can gather."_

She casts a throw away glance to the rows of other beds, and Sam's vision and senses are finally clear enough to see a row of bed with six other bodies, all covered in black blood, none of them moving. The other missing people from the town.

She evaporates into a mass of black smoke and its darkness shoots forward until it hangs right in front Sam's face, a garish face of blood tinged lips and empty eyes. " _Then I found you Sam_ ; _I couldn't decide at first whether I wanted to take you or your brother,"_ She hovers a glance backwards at Dean, a sneering, pleasing smile on her face. _"You both have so much,_ beautiful _darkness inside- an invitation to a feast after a millennia of foraging in trash heaps. But then you stared right. into._ _me at the hotel and decided for me."_

She moves forward and the Cypress Branch Sam launches at her flies through the darkness underneath of still standing bed frames. She turned back around and snatches his head in her hands.

A white pain explodes in Sam's head and the world melts away into hot fire and blue ice.

Sam rears his head back and screams.

 **[** _The hand moves deep inside his chest and slices through all his organs. "C'mon Sammy, don't fall apart yet, this is only Round One," the hand inside of him crystalizes in blue ice, moving up inside, freezing over his heart. The organ stops and Sam's body convulses on still being alive but with his blood not being able to move. "Round Two is the next hundred years-"_ **]**

"Sammy!" Dean hears Sam scream like he is being torn apart cell by cell.

" _I predate Judeo-Christianity by millennia, but finding a human soul that was slow pulled by the Fallen Angel Lucifer,"_ Nyx pulls forward over Sam as he convulses on the pain that floods into him, following each convulsion down like a train derailing off a bridge. " _An actual human charbroiled and blackened with enough darkness to keep me alive for_ decades _, it almost makes me want to convert."_ Her mouth opens into a void as dark as a black hole and she inhales a ripping suck of air and a rising curl of blackness emerges from Sam's mouth.

 **[** _Lucifer resembles Nick on most days, but today his face is his true one, a mass of curling ram's horns and leathery flesh that drips with black blood. His voice, is still all Nick's, slow and pandering. He turns to a work table made of bone white beach wood covered in weapons: iron sickles, long bladed knives, rusted hand saws. Lucifer lingers over the items like he is selecting a bouquet of flowers; he picks up a long, flat, leather whip studded with iron spikes all along its length._

 _He turns around, coiling the leather in his hand. "How many licks Sam?"_

 _Lucifer's face shifts back into Nick, because he knows it tortures Sam the most, because it is the face that Sam knew before he took him over._

 _Sam's arms are tied high above his head with a length of rope that is stained black and red from old and new blood. He wears the same shirt and jeans he wore when he jumped. But his jacket and shoes are gone, and his bare feet are caked in a thickness of blood. Blood rings his eyes and streaks down his face._

 _Lucifer approaches Sam in a haze of ice blue shadow with a scraping sound of hooved feet under dirty jeans._

" _How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie roll Center of a Sammy Pop?" Lucifer uncoils the leather whip and it unfurls with a rattle of razor sharp iron spikes._

 _Sam's body shakes from constant, unrelenting, torture. Short, stuttering moans rattle out of him like dropped coins._

 _Lucifer reaches out and jerks Sam's chin up with hooked, curved talons. "Let's find out-" He raises the whip up high and it slices like electricity onto Sam's skin, snapping back a stream of waving blood._

 _Sam screams._

" _One-"_ **]**

A second, louder scream comes from Sam's mouth, there and lost as more darkness pulls from his mouth in a cloud.

He hears Dean scream his name.

 **[** _The whip raised again, the iron spikes rip into the flesh, ripping away massive chunks._

" _Two-"_

 _Sam's scream grows higher, tearing into the red streaked air. He throws his head back in agony. The roof of the Cage is solid, blue ice and he sees the reflection of his sternum hanging open from the ripped flesh._ **]**

"Sammy!"Dean thrashes in the coil of blackness Nyx encircles him in, watching his brother shake in seizure like agony under the Goddess' hands. "You're fucking dead, you fucking evil bitch!" Dean manages to free one hand and pulls with bare hands; the Darkness burns his skin like corrosive acid. "YOU'RE FUCKING **DEAD!** "

 **[** _Sam's head raises up in a gasp that leaks blood out of his mouth. He sees the whip as it raises up again._

" _No," he breathes in a breath that falls into stuttered shakes. Don't,_ don't! _Please!-_ " _Tears rip down his face because it has been a lifetime, his lifetime and beyond_ _of nothing but pain. It's all he remembers anymore._ " _Please."_ **]**

The stream of Darkness cuts off with a jerk. Sam collapses backwards but does not fall because Nyx keeps long fingers dug into his head.

The Goddess throws her head back in an orgasmic motion.

"Please," Sam's voice shutters in panted agony.

Dean jerks and thrashes at the Darkness, as more and more of his flesh is burned almost completely off.

Nyx raises her head up and the Darkness of her face twists into a mask of condescending pity.

Sam swallows blood, eyes blinking open and shut, open and shut in horrible pain. "Don't-"

 **[** _Lucifer's face is enveloped in a carnal smile. "Three-"_ **]**

Nyx smiles and opens her mouth full and wide, and Sam's screams race across the entire emptiness of the building.

The Goddess suddenly throws her head back in a scream of her own and turns around and sees Dean's hand plunging the stake of Cypress into the Blackness she has coiled him in. She yanks her hands off of Sam and he falls into a boneless heap onto the floor. Her form vanishes in a blanket of blackness, then reemerges right next to Dean, empty eyes wide in terrifying anger.

The Cypress wood splits apart in Dean's hands and it drops into splinters to the ground.

" _You cannot escape Darkness!"_ Her face is millimeters from his.

Dean manages to turn his head just enough to see Sam lying in a broken pile on the ground, not moving. He yanks up hard until his hand is free and shoves a palm, coated and dusted with Cypress splinters, directly into Nyx's dead eyes. The goddess flails forward cracking apart the stone support beam enough to drop Dean to the ground.

It only takes second for Nyx to reorient herself and she emerges in full form on the ground where Dean fell.

She screams and sweeps forward in a rising cloud of pure, black energy, just as Dean rolls and shoves one of the broken halves of the stake into her chest.

Her body shudders backwards and she roars like a tornado sweeping across the land and explodes into black mist that cracks apart the support beams of the building like old match sticks. The rows of metal beds scrape and tear across the floor like they are nothing more than dry leaves, the industrial size windows of the warehouse blow apart.

Dean throws his arms up over his head as a rain of shattered glass tears into his back, and pieces of wood and concrete pelt the ground; the thundering noise of everything in his vicinity blowing apart rip apart his hearing. A screeching of metal tears a hole through the floorboard and Dean watches as one of the metal bedframes is lifted up from the ground. He catches a glimpse of long bare legs.

"Sammy!"

The bedframe comes hurling at him in a propeller-like spin and Dean rolls into as tight of a ball as he can, arms up over his head as it makes impact.

When it all finally stops Dean raises his head up; a high pitch whine ringing loudly in both ear drums. A cloud of dust hangs in the air like a dewy fog. There is metal, wood, and glass everywhere. The bedframe lays on top of him under a pile of wooden floor boards, and ripped apart pieces of wood that had been pulled off lintels and window sills.

Blood is wet on Dean's back and arms and pain shoots though them when he moves. Debris is everywhere, beds piled on top of each other. From underneath a torn chunk of metal Dean spies his brother's legs.

"Sammy-" He turns over and pushes himself out from underneath the bed with a grunt, leaving bloody handprints on the metal. "C'mon, _C'mon!"_ He pushes harder, closes his eyes and throws his head back in a grunted scream until he slides out free from the bedframe and wooden debris that weights it down. His jeans ripped and bloody, but he jump up, and his legs take his weight.

"Sammy!" Dean runs to the bedframe broken upwards in the middle, pinning Sam to the floor. He lifts it up with a grunt and flips it over with a bang.

"Sam-hey!" Dean falls on his knees beside Sam's still form, shaking him. A line of blood as bright as neon lights runs down Sam's head. His skin is ashy and is covered in sweat. "Hey-!" Dean slaps his face with both hands.

Sam comes awake with a gasp and jerks upright so fast he almost head butts Dean.

"Hey easy-!-" Dean reaches out and grabs Sam's arm, but at the touch Sam jerks and gasps like he is being burned. Dean pulls his hand away as Sam stumbles backwards and climbs onto his feet with unsteady movements. Sam stares back and forth around the room wildly, like he is seeing something Dean isn't, breathing in, in erratic puffs of air. Dean jumps back to his feet. "Sam _,_ hey-"

Sam head moves in a small tick when he hears his name and locks his eyes on _"Dean-"_

Dean steps over the rubble slowly, hands out. "You okay?-" He moves towards Sam.

"I-" a shudder runs through Sam. He stares at the blood stains on himself, then back up at Dean. "I-" The shudder grows harder, stronger, and jerks him off of his feet in a gasp.

"Hey, hey _-_! _"_ Dean rushes out and catches Sam as he drops to the ground, "Sammy, hey-"

The shudder takes over Sam's entire body, a jerky sob rips from his throat, then another, and another, the noise echoing off the rubble.

"It's over," Dean pulls Sam to him, fists curled against Sam's back. "It's over brother-" He set's a hand to Sam's head. "I have you." Sam's sobs thump and rattle painfully with each breath Dean takes as he holds to Sam on the blown apart floorboards.

A whisper light, pain filled cough echoes up from the rubble and Sam raises his head. The noise happens again and Sam turns to Dean, face damp and eyes red, and takes the smallest of breaths. "Dean-" Sam is a mass of arms and legs as he pushes himself up on bare feet and stumbles forward.

Dean grabs Sam before he can fall again and moves with him as he hovers over two metal bed frames that had been flung on top of each other, leaving a triangle gap of darkened space.

Sam grabs the top bed frame and lifts it up with a gasp. Dean grabs the metal and it tumbles over in both their grasps. Dean lifts the second one straight up like the blade of a pocket knife.

Sam crouches in front of the body that is curled into a fetal position on the floor. She is bleeding and covered with a shine of embedded glassy debris. "Madeline-" he touches Madeline's shoulder and her head turns, her eyes are like wide open doors of a building after a hurricane hits. "It's okay-"

Madeline uncurls herself and pulls herself up with blood stained arms, Sam grabs her hand and pulls her carefully into a sitting position away from all the broken debris. "It's going to be okay-" he watches as Madeline's face crumbles and she reaches out her arms and throws them around his neck.

Dean stands over them both and watches as Sam wraps equally blood stained arms across Madeline's back, holding her as she cries.

 **xxxxXxxxx**

" _Sammy-"_

Sam blinks to a gray light with bits of shadows.

He blinks again, feeling something soft bundled under his head. Dean's shape is leaning over him and he sees something white in his brother's hand.

"You with me?" Dean wraps a length of bandage over the one that is already on Sam's arm and is dotted with blood. "C'mon man, I need you to be with me," He lifts Sam's other arm and starts to repeat the same process.

Sam blinks his eyes open again to a gray light. He's lying down in the backseat of the Impala on his back. He is still in the dirty blue hospital gown and his long legs hang out of the opened passenger side door. A clicking of Cicadas echo outside the opened doorway, and warm air that smells like damp mud filters in a breeze over him. "Dean?-"

"That's my boy, c'mon, sit up," He feels Dean grab his hand and pull him up to a sitting position, leaning him up so that his shoulder is resting against the back of the bench seat. He blinks in the early morning light.

Dean stands over him and eyes him critically. "You okay?"

Sam doesn't talk, but nods against the bench seat. Dean watches him for another moment before moving away to the back of the car.

The Impala is parked in a grassy clearing that is lined in low lying scrub tress. The sun is barely peeking out at the edge of the horizon but a drowsy warmth already covers the air; Whippoorwills scatter their calls down from the trees and the tall grass.

"Where are we?" Sam asks, staring out over the field in front of him.

"Somewhere outside of Macon," Dean's voice travels to Sam, and a few seconds later Dean himself is standing in front of Sam holding up a bottle of water and a brown bottle of beer.

Sam reaches for the water bottle, seeing the faintest outline of blood on his brother's knuckles. "Thanks"

Dean twists the cap of the bottle of beer and takes a pull from it.

Sam uncaps the water bottle and drinks half of it in two swallows, some drips down his chin and he wipes it off with the back of his hand. "How long was I out?" After finding Madeline in the warehouse, Sam's vision had started to go gray, and the last thing he remembers is his head hurting before he didn't remember anything.

"We made it out to the car, and you just dropped," Dean takes another mouthful of beer. "Cops showed up a few minutes later, lights and sirens and ambulances-"

"Madeline?" Sam questions.

"They got her out," Dean says. "The others' didn't make it-" Dean's voice is sorrowful when he speaks, seeing the way Sam's eyes mirror his sorrow. "The stellar Deputy team of Athens Sherriff's Department kept grilling Madeline on what happened as she was being packed into the ambulance. I wasn't about to let you get more of the same-" Dean stares at Sam over the lip of the beer bottle. "So I yanked our stuff from the motel and drove. But every little bump and pothole in the road kept soaking blood through your bandages. I didn't want to move you so I pulled off here at midnight to wait it out."

"What about Nyx?" Sam asks slowly, feeling his throat burn in hoarseness from screaming.

"She got blown back to Tartarus like she fucking deserved," Dean's voice is acidic as he tips the last remaining swallows of his beer down his throat. He lowers the bottle from land pitches it to the grass.

"You okay?" Dean repeats again, watching Sam lean heavily against the car like it is the only thing that is supporting him.

Sam watches as a warm wind brushes over the grass and through the leaves of the trees and doesn't answer.

"It wasn't your fault you know," Dean says. "What that bitch did to you, there was no way you could've saved them all. You saved who you could save Sam."

"I know-" Sam didn't turn his gaze away from the field. "I know,"

"You wanna talk?" Dean knows Sam knows what he means.

"No-" Sam abruptly looks away from the trees and the grass and back up to Dean. "No, I'm okay." His eyes are lined in visible red capillaries and he doesn't blink.

"Sam-"

"I said I'm good Dean," Sam blinks and lowers his eyes to the patch of dirt and grass at his feet.

"Hey-" Dean moves closer to the car, setting a hand on the roof and ducking his head down. "No one's asking you to be- least of all me," Dean watches Sam's eyes raise back up to meet his.

Sam's gaze wander over the blood on Dean's knuckles and sees more of it staining his shirt sleeves, His eyes widen when he notices. "You okay?"

At Sam's words, Dean looks down at himself like he is noticing a food stain on his clothes for the first time. "It's just blood Sam, nothing broken."

"You almost died in there Dean-"

"So did you."

Sam falls silent after Dean's interruption.

"You say you're good Sam, I'm not arguing you on that –but I'm not," Dean shrugs with too much heaviness for it to be casual. "Back there, hearing you _scream_ about the Cage- I couldn't do a damn thing to stop it, then or now-" his throat clogs on a pause. "Sammy I'm sorry."

"You don't have to say that-" Sam's voice is no bigger of a sound than the wind that blows through the dry grass and the trees. "Not to me – okay?"

Dean stares at Sam for a long time before he answers. "Okay."

Sam clears his throat and looks down at his bare legs that are already feeling the prickly sensation of a beginning sunburn in the warm Georgia air; the dry tips of brown grass blades poke at the bare soles of his feet. "Think I may need a change of clothes," He looks back up at Dean with a shrug that works its way into a quiet smile.

Dean doesn't smile back, but his eyes soften. "I got you covered in that department bro," he thumps Sam softly on the shoulder and disappears around the side of the Impala.

Sam hears the trunk open with a squeak and a few moments' later Dean stands back in front of him.

"Ten minutes I turn around, then I start helping," he holds out Sam's black duffle bag.

Sam reaches out and closes his hand around the bag's handles, and watches as Dean walks away through the grass.

Twelve minutes later Sam is walking across the field to where Dean is standing at a wide tree stump the color of cream being swirled in black coffee. The sky has gone from gray to light blue with pink edges of the rising sun.

Dean turns around as he hears Sam's footsteps approach.

Sam stops walking when he sees Dean watching him. "Ready to roll?"

Dean eyes Sam, in wrinkled but clean jeans and a plaid button up rolled up at the sleeves to compensate for the extra bulk of the bandages on his arm, skin pale, eyes red rimmed.

"Only if you sleep from here to Lebanon," Dean returns. "You look like crapped out toast."

Sam laughs a dry kind of laugh from the analogy; one that manages to pass the pain just enough to count. "You got it."

They turn in two fluid movements; Dean keeps a slower pace behind Sam until they reach the Impala and Sam climbs inside the passenger seat with a squeak of the door and a crinkle of the old leather. Dean follows in the driver's seat moments later and turns on the engine, driving out of the field with a rumble of the tires on the soft tilled dirt and dry grass until they are back onto a single lane road that only drives slightly smoother under the tires than the field did.

The grassy field hugs the road, half disappearing under post and barbed wire of a cattle fence. The sun is fully awake now, yellow light shining through the window, warm on Sam's exposed skin. He looks down at his right arm where it rests against the door, and raises a hand and rubs the crux between his thumb and forefinger over the roughness of the white bandages. There are small smears of red over one layer of bandage, the size of fingerprints.

Sam traces his thumb over these marks. "Hey Dean-"

Dean moves his eyes off the road and glances at him.

Sam lifts his eyes from the bandages to his brother. "Thank you."

"You don't need to say that Sammy," Dean says back, swinging his head until his gaze is fully on Sam. "Not ever man, okay?"

He bites down on a breath and gives Dean a nod that says 'okay' too. He tilts his head down to rest against the doorframe, his neck bending at an awkward angle due to his tall height, he shifts his shoulder and grimaces at the movement.

Dean turns away from the road and observes Sam for a second. He releases wheel and swings that arm over the backseat.

"Hey-"

Sam lifts his head when Dean bumps him in the shoulder. Dean is holding out his canvas jacket half folded into a bundle.

Sam takes it from him, a quiet laugh breaking past the pain again. "Thanks."

He sets the bundle against the door and props his head against it. The smell of warm beer and axle grease comes from somewhere deep in the fabric and he breathes is all in, letting his eyes drop close.

* * *

 **xxxXxx**

 **R/R please.**


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